No Longer a Newbie Prepper? 20 Ways To Stay Prepared

So, you’re no longer a newbie prepper. You’ve got the bug out bag. The emergency disaster plan. Blackout kits. Mock drills. You are starting to feel good about your preps. Now you’re looking for ways that you can be an even better prepper.

You’re in luck. Here’s how to stay prepared for emergencies and disasters.

Here are 20 ways that you can stay prepared:

Inventory kits and gear regularly – You should always be improving your kits to reflect your current skills and knowledge. Inventory your kits and gear at least once a year, if not twice a year. Put a reminder in your phone or calendar or planner or whatever.

Test gear regularly – Not only should you be inventorying your gear and kits, you should also regularly be testing your gear. Testing gear once doesn’t prove its effectiveness. Something could work great once, but will it continue to work?

Learn to be more self-reliant – Learn how to repurpose, reuse, recycle. Learn more about solar power. Get some chickens or other livestock, if you can. Figure out how not to rely so much on others.

Learn bushcraft skills – You never know when you might need to make a spear from a stick. Learn basic bushcraft skills. It’s not only good to know this stuff (cause you never know, right?) but it’s good to practice it regularly.

Practice controlling fear and emotions – Fear can break you but if you can learn to face your gear and control your emotions, you’ll be able to act and react quicker than normal people who never train.

Focus more on your overall health – Go for walks. Try to eat healthier. Take a multivitamin. Do what we can to improve our overall health.

Start a garden – Gardening isn’t easy. It’s important we practice this skill regularly. You can have a container garden, an indoor garden, you can even garden in the fall. Learn and practice.

Look into gas masks – You may think a gas mask isn’t necessary but there are many reasons to have a gas mask outside of nuclear. You could also look into getting regular N95 masks.

Go hunting and fishing – Hunting and fishing are perishable skills. Not only that, they do require education as in how to actually hunt and fish. Don’t just hunt and fish the big guys, go for small game, too. You could even try your hand at eating bugs.

Learn to identify plants and trees – Identifying plants is a whole new world of prepping. If you can successfully identify plants and trees, you can use them in your cooking, healing, hygiene, etc. I would suggest learning to identify by getting books from trusted sources.

Learn how to scavenge the city – If you live in the city, knowing how to scavenge what’s around can be a huge skill. What sort of “garbage” would be useful? Are there any food or water sources around?

Increase your first aid knowledge – Personally, I think first aid is a perishable skill that should be refreshed at least once a year. Take a stop the bleed class, take beginner and advanced first aid classes, read books, etc. Always be advancing your first aid knowledge.

Learn when to improvise – Improvising is great and we should all know how to adapt, improvise and what items are multi-purpose. But we should also learn when to improvise. We should prep the proper gear first and only improvise when nothing else is available.

Ever change your EDC – Your EDC should be constantly changing based on your needs. For instance, if you have children, as they grow you’ll be changing your EDC to match their needs. As your skills grow, you’ll be changing what you carry based on your knowledge.

Focus more attention on self-defense and home defense – Take classes, read books and ever be improving your general defense for home and self.

Develop a system for intel – Through HAM, social media, Google alerts, friends, family, websites. You need to always have a solid stream of intel coming in about natural disasters, what’s going on in the world, etc. Knowledge is power.

Take classes – Take all sorts of classes on all sorts of topics. Cooking, car maintenance, home maintenance, primitive skills, essential oils; whatever.

Get into canning and dehydrating – Canning and dehydrating are great ways to learn how to preserve your own food. These home methods can help you preserve food anywhere from 1-5 years or more depending on how it’s stored. There is an initial investment of the supplies, but it’s worth it, especially if you can preserve stuff from your own garden.

Save money, make money and get out of debt – Being financially stable is an asset that everyone should be continually working towards. Bring in more income from a variety of sources. Save as much as you can. Get out and stay out of debt. Take it one step at a time.

I guess the main moral of the story with this post is, don’t stay stagnant.

Always be learning.

Don’t take anything for granted and never stop expanding your knowledge and skills.

9 thoughts on “No Longer a Newbie Prepper? 20 Ways To Stay Prepared”

I would like to expand a little on # 20.
Lord knows how hard it is to save money at any time let alone when we are trying to get our preps in order.
I believe that soon fiat currency will be nearly worthless.
Gold and silver have held value for thousands of years.Yes precious metals are expensive,but they come in fractional amounts.One tenth,one quarter,and one half ounces are available.
They won’t be getting any cheaper.
That’s just my two cents worth….No pun intended.
By the way.Great Article!

We do a ‘silly’ thing. We get a few rolls of quarters or half dollars from time to time from the credit union; go through them from real silver, then re-roll and keep the silver, and turn back in the junk

I can’t really tell you how much you need, that’s based on your needs, what you’re prepping for and overall desire to be prepared. How much someone stockpiles or how much someone learns is really up to them and their desire.

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Howdy! Welcome! My name is Morgan. I’m a wife, mother and preparedness advocate. If you’re looking to get prepared or to be better prepared, you’ve come to the right place! Conquer tomorrow, by preparing today!